


There Are No Perfect Teeth In This Universe

by nadinehurley



Series: (Eulogy For) An Adolescence Shattered [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Criminal Behavior, Drug Abuse, Drug Dealing, F/M, General Patron-Minette Fuckery, Rule 63 Claquesous, Trans Character, crust punks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 12:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18121157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadinehurley/pseuds/nadinehurley
Summary: Patron-Minette are up to no good, as always.Then Claquesous comes to town.





	There Are No Perfect Teeth In This Universe

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a submission for Montsous Week 2019 but real life kicked my ass and I didn't finish it in time. I don't really know if it's finished now to be perfectly honest, but I figured if I didn't stop messing around with it it would never get posted at all. So. Here we are. Maybe I'll add more to this someday.
> 
> This is, maybe, a prequel of sorts to my old, old fic "My Idea Of Fun" because I'm never going to let the southern crust punk AU die I guess no matter how many years pass between me touching it. You don't have to read that one to get down with this one though.
> 
> As always I have no idea what kind of content warning to put on this thing, but if you proceed there's a whole boatload of casual slurs and questionable substance use / abuse in your future. Patron-Minette are technically the bad guys, after all. Have fun, be safe, etc.

It’s summer when they meet Claquesous for the first time. She is twenty-one years old.

Montparnasse and Eponine sit on the steps outside the office at Thenardier’s motel, passing cigarettes between themselves and absently watching Gavroche and Azelma color on the asphalt with the broken dregs of their sidewalk chalk. At least one of them is supposed to be working right now, but it’s hotter in the office than it is outside in the splotchy shade on the stoop, so they’re here instead.

“This fucking sucks,” Eponine observes astutely, tucking sweat-soaked pink-and-brown hair behind her heavily pierced ears. It is her first summer after (barely) finishing high school, and it’s not exactly what she had expected. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised.

Montparnasse shrugs. It does suck. His fake-black hair is long, falling in heavy waves over his shoulders, and he is _wilting_ in the heat. “Yeah. Your mom will be back soon, right?”

Eponine snorts at the notion of her mother putting in a day’s work for any reason. Her English isn’t nearly as abysmal as she puts on around clients, but her work ethic certainly is. “Like hell she will. Pa said we could cut out at 5:00 though - if he’s not back by then I’m still leavin’. I wanna go see if Gueulemer’s got weed.”

Montparnasse fishes his half-broken flip phone from the pocket of his skin tight black jeans with a certain amount of difficulty, given that the film of sweat all over his body makes his pants stick to his skinny legs even more than normal. He checks the time. It’s only 2:30.

He groans and lights another cigarette.

Cars whizz past on the highway parallel to the motel. Across the parking lot a door opens, and a girl emerges from one of the rooms in a frayed terry cloth bathrobe. She promptly spits a mouthful of blood onto the pavement.

Montparnasse and Eponine exchange looks, perked up by this sudden development. Gavroche and Azelma continue drawing with their chalk, oblivious.

The girl wipes her mouth with the sleeve of her bathrobe, staining the edges coppery red. She reaches into one of her pockets and swears before reaching into the other and repeating the process. She looks up and makes eye contact with Montparnasse before strutting resolutely across the parking lot.

“Hey,” she says, stopping right in front of Montparnasse and Eponine. Her skin is light brown and there are tattoos on her face. Her accent is Southern but strange - almost Creole, but not quite. “You got a cigarette?”

“Maybe,” Montparnasse says, even though he’s clearly smoking one. “You okay? You got somethin’...”

He gestures vaguely at her teeth, which are still bloodied.

The girl shrugs, like nothing is out of the ordinary. “I’m fine.”

There is a tense silence while Eponine and Montparnasse have a conversation only with their eyes. Montparnasse picks up the package of gold Marlboro Lights sitting on the step between them and extracts a cigarette he then offers to the girl.

She accepts, quickly lighting it with a scuffed Zippo from the pocket of her bathrobe.

“Thanks,” she tells them curtly, and turns to walk away.

“Wait,” Eponine says, against her better judgement. “What’s your name? You’re new here.”

The girl stops, turning to look over her shoulder. “Who’s asking?”

Eponine shrugs. “Just curious, ‘sall. We work here.”

“Workin’ hard, I see.”

Eponine tries not to frown and fails. “AC’s busted. It’s too damn hot to sit inside.”

The girl makes a noncommittal noise, exhaling smoke out her nose like a dragon. She turns around and starts once again to walk away but as she goes she says, “I’m Claquesous.”

-

They see Claquesous around the motel sometimes, after that. Usually she’s coming or going with Fauntleroy, one of the motel’s more permanent residents and an acquaintance of Babet and his ilk. She bums cigarettes from Montparnasse sometimes when she sees him but they don’t talk much. She still doesn’t know his name and has no intentions of learning it; Claquesous is a drifter and has no desire to stay in town for more than a few months. She doesn’t know where she’s going or what she’s doing in life, but the buck does not stop here. Maybe it will never stop at all, and she’ll just keep going forever.

Montparnasse gives her a cigarette when she spots him on the stairs outside the office one night. He doesn’t usually work on his own; only comes around to help if Eponine puts him up to it because she or her parents are in a bind again. Claquesous inquires about her while they smoke and it’s maybe the most they’ve said to each other in the weeks she’s been in town.

“She’s keeping the kids tonight,” Montparnasse says simply. Claquesous has seen the kids in question - they’re usually running around the office or the parking lot at all hours, filthy and half dressed and always creating a commotion. “One of ‘em’s sick.”

“Are they yours?” Claquesous asks. She’s wondered about it. They could be teen parents. Montparnasse and Eponine are clearly younger than she is, though it’s difficult to gauge just how much based on their appearances alone. The weary look in Montparnasse’s amber eyes says he could be at least 100.

Still, he laughs. It’s a strangled kind of sound.

“What? The kids? No, they’re not.”

He doesn’t volunteer any other information. Claquesous prods.

“Are they hers?”

Montparnasse shakes his head but he tells her, “they could be. Might as well be. They’re her siblings.”

Claquesous nods. She understands.

There’s a shift after that. They don’t notice it, really, but they begin to share cigarettes more frequently; to speak more freely when they do.

That same night she learns that his name is Montparnasse.  

-

Claquesous meets Babet when she finds him with Mangedentelle, huffing glue behind a dumpster at the motel. She is throwing away the garbage that’s been accumulating in the tiny room she shares with Fauntleroy. Housekeeping is not a concept Thenardier appears to have a particularly sound grip on, probably because he would have to pay someone to do it if he wanted it to get done.

Babet has long, greasy brown hair and a patchy beard. He’s the same age as Claquesous, but he has a wife and daughter. He’s the sick kind of skinny and the sick kind of pale, and he’s practicing card tricks with Mangedentelle, who looks like she could be sixteen but probably (hopefully) isn’t.

He’s high on glue.

“I know you,” he tells Claquesous. His wide green eyes are bloodshot. “You’re the stripper with the face tattoos.”

Claquesous cocks a drawn-on eyebrow. She pitches a tied-off plastic bag from the Dollar Tree into the overflowing dumpster, but says nothing. He’s probably seen her at the club.

“Montparnasse talks about you,” Babet says. Mangedentelle giggles. “That fucker don’t stop talking about you.”

“Elaborate,” Claquesous says lowly, carefully. She does not know Babet - does not know he lives with his wife and daughter in the same trailer park where Eponine grew up, that he hasn’t used inhalants in years, that he’s only started again because his wife is pregnant with their second child and he doesn’t know how else to deal with it.

Babet shrugs. “I thought you was made up, honestly. Parnasse says you’re _interesting,_ ” he tells her, using exaggerated air quotes. He sways in his dirty combat boots. Mangedentelle will not be able to support his weight if he takes a tumble.  “Or like, mysterious, or some shit. Ponine’s real broke up about it even though she’s been fuckin’ some dude who went to college since before he got out of Juvie, like, forever ago.”

He raises his eyebrows exaggeratedly. Claquesous doesn’t know why she’s entertaining his ramblings in the first place, but he’s high and shows no signs of stopping.

“Ponine runs with the trust punks now. Thinks she’s too good for us, ‘cause she’s got friends who’re only playing poor. Serves her dumb ass right.”

“What are you fucking talking about?” Claquesous asks, but she’s already turned and walked away before Babet can give her an answer.

-

The next time Montparnasse and Claquesous smoke cigarettes on the motel’s cracked concrete stoop she asks: “You got any friends that do glue?”

Montparnasse quirks a perfect eyebrow. Some of his eyeliner has transferred to his browbone in the summer heat, but Claquesous does not point this out. “What? I don’t know. Probably.” He takes a drag on his cigarette. “You lookin’ to score? You know you can just, like… go to Wal-Mart, right? We have those here.”

Claquesous does not dignify this with an answer. Instead, she says, “some guy was out doin’ glue by the dumpsters the other day when I was taking the trash out. He had long hair and a beard? And like, crazy eyes? He said you’d told him about me. Said you was talkin’ shit.”

It’s unclear whether or not the blush beneath Montparnasse’s fair complexion is from the heat.

“Cocksucker,” he says, more to himself than to Claquesous. “That sounds like Babet.”

“Babet, huh?”

“I thought he quit doin’ that shit. You know he’s got a kid?”

“Why the fuck would I know that? I don’t know you people from Adam,” Claquesous snaps, but it’s more a reminder to herself that this is all impermanent, and ought to stay that way. “He said your little baby mama wasn’t too happy I’d been hangin’ around.”

“They aren’t my kids,” Montparnasse tells her with a long-suffering sigh. “They aren’t anybody’s kids. She’s seeing somebody, anyway. They’re both so full of shit.”

“Are they?”

“Babet’s a fucking moron. Eponine is… well, she’s Eponine. She’ll be alright.”

Claquesous hums noncommittally and wonders how true that really is. She wants to push his buttons - ask him about his glaring crush on her - but it feels like crossing an unspoken boundary. Things are already getting a little too close for comfort; a little too routine.

She flicks her cigarette onto the pavement and says nothing.

-

“Claquesous’ gone,” Eponine says a few weeks later, slamming her hands down on the sticky table in the darkest corner of the only bar in the county willing to look past the latest questionable fake ID’s Glorieux has conjured up for her and Montparnasse. It sounds more triumphant than she means it to.

Montparnasse’s immaculate eyebrows arch in something like surprise. “Since when?”

Eponine shrugs and wedges herself into the booth next to him. “Today, I guess. Pa said she left this morning.”

“That’s… odd,” Montparnasse finally decides. His face is calculatedly blank.

“So?” Gueulemer asks expectantly from across the table. His long braids are mashed down under a Suicidal Tendencies trucker hat and a film of sweat covers his dark skin even though they're indoors. He looks annoyed that they’re having this conversation again. “Who cares? We never even met this broad.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Montparnasse tells him. “She doesn’t matter. She’s nobody.”

 _“We_ met her,” Mangedentelle says unhelpfully. They all look past the way she links her bony arm with married Babet’s where she’s sandwiched between him and Gueulemer. “Behind the dumpster at Mister T’s.”

“Behind the _dumpster_ ,” Montparnasse says incredulously, taking a sip from a dented can of Tecate.

“What? You too good for the dumpster now? You’re worse than this one.”

Babet’s wild, bloodshot eyes fall on Eponine, who scowls at him. He grins at her crookedly.

“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Montparnasse asks. “Was I ever _not_ too good for the dumpster? You’re too goddamn old for that shit anyway, _Papa Bear._ Calm down.”

Mangedentelle recoils ever slightly at the mention of Babet’s children, but doesn’t actually extract her arm from where it’s still linked with his. It’s just as well.

“No such thing as too good for the dumpster,” Babet says sagely, like this is sound advice that makes sense in any context outside of their weird little world. He winks at no one in particular.

“The dumpster,” Gueulemer repeats matter-of-factly. “Claquesous sounds nice.”

“She’s real classy,” Eponine agrees, as if she has any room to talk.

It isn’t like Babet says it is, when he’s high on glue and airing his friends’ dirty laundry behind Mr. Thenardier’s motel dumpster - she couldn’t give two shits about whose face Montparnasse wants to sit on, and she’s perfectly happy sitting on college crust punk Marius Pontmercy’s face herself.

But Eponine has been especially protective of Montparnasse since he got out of Juvie the last time, because he’s the closest thing to family she’s got besides her kid siblings and he’s eighteen now so it suddenly feels like it matters more. She won’t lose him again so soon, especially not to some strange, transient “ _nobody”_ who almost never speaks (at least, not to her).

Eponine and Montparnasse don’t do things like _feelings_ or _loving each other,_ but it’s almost tender all the same.

Still - Montparnasse delivers a swift elbow to her very pronounced ribs.

“You’re such a fucking brat, Ponine.”

“Shut up, _faggot_.”

_“Cunt.”_

_“Bastard.”_

_“Jesus,”_ Gueulemer says with a shake of his head. “Sorry I asked.”

-

The sticky-hot summer gives way to fall in Claquesous’ absence, and nearly takes her memory with it. People of all descriptions come and go from Thenardier’s dirty, crumbly motel on Chapman Highway, and evasive Claquesous with her eclectic face tattoos and penchant for stealing cigarettes and personal information but never offering either in return is just one strange character in a sea of many.

Montparnasse and company have managed to stay out of trouble, or at least out of the sights of local law enforcement. Gueulemer has been growing marijuana again, and business is booming. Eponine wants to go to beauty school now that she’s graduated but she doesn’t have the time or the money, so she works at the motel and watches the kids and sometimes runs drugs for the boys when she’s not crashing at the punk house with Marius Pontmercy and his merry band of half-homeless rich kid anarchists. Babet’s wife is heavily pregnant, and he’s started drinking cough syrup again.

Life goes on.

Montparnasse has a feeling she’ll be back, but til then -

There are bigger fish to fry than Claquesous, whoever she is.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](https://kruideniers.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/witches_house). will gladly talk your ear off about patron-minette / miserable lesbians / whatever.
> 
> xoxo.


End file.
